A Random Act of Violence

The Nazis seized on a murder committed by a confused young man as a justification for Kristallnacht.

By

Philip Kerr

May 3, 2013 2:16 p.m. ET

It's all too easy for anyone to think that his own life doesn't amount to a hill of beans and almost as easy perhaps to buy a gun and—depending on whom he's aiming at—to become a person of enduring note.

History is full of anonymous little men who altered its course in a matter of a few explosive seconds: John Wilkes Booth assassinating Lincoln in 1865, Gavrilo Princip shooting the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo in 1914, Nathuram Godse (Gandhi), Lee Harvey Oswald (Kennedy), Mark David Chapman (John...